I've never thought about music in that manner. I either like it or not. I do associate styles/genres with regions, which seems silly at first but it has to start somewhere.
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New Adam Neely
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OK, I finished watching the video. I don’t feel the need to change anything I typed in my previous posts. Adam makes some excellent points as usual. But the title is clickbait for sure, and that is part of the problem. I feel that every culture has always thought of themselves as better than others. They are all wrong, obviously. Academia has a viewpoint for sure. But I never encountered the kind of value judgements that Adam talks about. All the music education I ever had emphasized that the knowledge being imparted was valid only within a certain context. Or maybe that was just me exercising common sense. I mean, it’s music, how could there be a universal right and wrong? And how could any form of analysis not be completely dependent on its parent culture?
Western classical music education has been known for many decades to be a way of looking at an aging form of music. Not dead, but not really a vibrant part of modern culture either.
Western classical music education has been known for many decades to be a way of looking at an aging form of music. Not dead, but not really a vibrant part of modern culture either.
True that.
"What we have in common" seems to disappear faster and faster the more we "progress" into the future.
I have nothing to feel guilty about.
As a beginning bass student I purchased several bass instruction books to further my bass playing education. I purchased "Music Theory for the Bass Player" by Ariane Cap. Will studying this book screw me up as a bass player?
It is a very US situation there ... music theory is still true today. It just expended since but how to understand what is happening now if you don’t have a grasp of where it comes from.
Why Bach is used ? Because it clear and easy to analyze.
after that you you can find modern exemple...
just like the great Howard Goodall
Why Bach is used ? Because it clear and easy to analyze.
after that you you can find modern exemple...
just like the great Howard Goodall
The issue isn’t teaching classical western theory, it’s that classical western theory is the default theory taught (including self-described “outdated” information like figured bass) when classical music isn’t close to the main form of music most people listen to, American or not. Classical western theory didn’t describe modal jazz well. It doesn’t describe blues (and therefore rock) well. It certainly doesn’t describe music from outside the western world well (like ragas being associated with times of day, having different versions For ascending or descending, or requiring different articulation for different scale degrees; or Japanese shakuhachi players requiring specific tone colors on specific scale degrees). Western notation is robust enough to transcribe most of these, but does western theory explain how or why they work? Not really, and attempts to do so often leave out important details.
Adam himself has said that the main benefit of attending music school is not the information in the classes but the connections you make. If students are going to spend that kind of money, shouldn’t the actual education have more value?
The part that’s racist is the implicit assumption that one style (the old, dead, white style) is the default style and all of the others are alternatives and seen as lesser or less important.
My solution (at least, the first steps)? It’s pretty simple. Rename these classes so that they describe what they are: Classical Western Theory. Expand the world music course selection at prestigious schools. Expand the modern music course selection at prestigious schools. Allow people to earn degrees that focus on these other forms of music. Then the magic happens: people will begin to play this music more and more frequently, and people will hear something new that excites them. They will learn more about that music and the cultures they come from, and all of our lives will be richer from seeing a new perspective on the thing we love: music.
Adam himself has said that the main benefit of attending music school is not the information in the classes but the connections you make. If students are going to spend that kind of money, shouldn’t the actual education have more value?
The part that’s racist is the implicit assumption that one style (the old, dead, white style) is the default style and all of the others are alternatives and seen as lesser or less important.
My solution (at least, the first steps)? It’s pretty simple. Rename these classes so that they describe what they are: Classical Western Theory. Expand the world music course selection at prestigious schools. Expand the modern music course selection at prestigious schools. Allow people to earn degrees that focus on these other forms of music. Then the magic happens: people will begin to play this music more and more frequently, and people will hear something new that excites them. They will learn more about that music and the cultures they come from, and all of our lives will be richer from seeing a new perspective on the thing we love: music.
Descriptivist vs Prescriptivist
Boy, is that an eye opener. I never gave that a thought, but in my profession I‘ve used both. My wife however is decidedly in the “Prescriptivist” camp if you get my drift.
And...in the final analysis, people are going to listen to the music they want to listen to (whatever music theory is behind the genre).
Music is about freedom of expression -- however compositions have been influenced by and arrived at.
People like what they like. Music theory is far down the priority list (not saying it ain't important in the grand scheme of things!)
True, people like what they like. But they like what they are familiar with, and familiarity comes from exposure. I come from a classic metal background (Sabbath is still one of my favorite bands), but recently I heard music from a Mongolian band called The Hu. If I hadn’t heard their song, I would not have been curious about Mongolian music, but Wolf Totem (the song) hits a different but very cool spot than Sabbath.
Exposure breeds Understanding.
I don't have it in front of me right now, but my memory was that it's a pretty sensible approach, and it doesn't fall into the traps Adam Neely talks about--no figured bass, no assumption that 18th century European music is that yardstick that everything else has to be measured against. It's giving you some tools that are useful for most of the music bassists are likely to true without claiming they're the be-all and end-all.
We as musicians don't and can't exist in a vacuum outside of politics. That's not too say that we can't just "not talk about politics," so much as it is to say that even our perceptions of normal can be and are politically influenced in ways that most of the time we aren't even aware of, and for plenty of people to admit that is just plain pulling teeth. But here we are, constructing a house of context inside of reality to give our lives perspective.
Yeah. My take is that Neely conflates two quite different things, mostly because they ARE taught together a lot: music theory, which is mostly math. The science of why things sound they way they do. A system for understanding that in various contexts. The other thing is the prejudiced value system that esteems 18th century classical music above all else.
Just to further riff on your observation. George Russell attempted to adapt western music theory to more closely align with jazz harmony in his book "The Lydian Chromatic Concept." Most musicians I speak with, if they know the book at all, generally view it as a failure on a practical level.
In summary, my opinion is that the math of music theory is quite robust and fairly neutral. The cultural baggage taught along side it is highly prejudiced, and honestly more personal opinion than science. I embrace the former; I eschew the latter.
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So, I feel like you and Adam Neely are in violent agreement here.... He doesn't say Schenker is "evil". He explicitly says that he admires a lot of his work. And Adam Neely is clearly a huge fan of 18th century Western music.
I'd disagree with the statement that Schenker was "a good guy". At a minimum, that's a massive oversimplification of someone who was (like all of us) complicated. He had important and interesting ideas. That he was also outspokenly racist is also a verifiable historical fact. And he regarded his music theory work as part of his program to promote the superiority of his own race and nationality, so it's not a separate thing.
That doesn't mean we have to throw out Schenker! It means we put him in context--we can take Schenker's ideas as a useful for understanding certain aspects of music, without accepting that it's a universal guide to what's good in music. Like you say, we can include all that other stuff in the mix too.
That's the middle ground, between "pretend Schenker never said that stuff", and "pretend Schenker never did anything useful".
I think (and indeed hope) that this is just a phase. We have progressed beyond where many of us thought everyone else was just like us, and started finding out about the differences that actually exist. Some of us are taking a long hard look at them to find out what those differences are about. I quite understand that some people can get freaked out by that, but it’s the only way forward. It’s only through looking at who we really are that we can ultimately find common ground.
How long this phase will last, I don’t know. It might easily (given the average age of most TB members) last for the rest of our lives. But on the other side - hopefully - lies a better time, where we can actually celebrate both our uniqueness and the things that unite us, musically and otherwise.
Didn’t watch the video.
Not a fan of ‘racist’ and its derivatives being used as click-bait. I feel it does more to keep us apart than bring us together. Conversations are essential to change and growth, and ‘racist‘ is such a charged term that a lot of people stop listening, and stop learning, when that word is used.
Not a fan of ‘racist’ and its derivatives being used as click-bait. I feel it does more to keep us apart than bring us together. Conversations are essential to change and growth, and ‘racist‘ is such a charged term that a lot of people stop listening, and stop learning, when that word is used.
I'd be curious what you see as the math of music theory. As someone who's always been fascinated by both math and music, I always felt a lot of appeal for the notion that there was a deep connection between the two. In practice I think there's less there than I'd expected. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily--I don't think less of music for it being a messy human thing.
Gosh. For me, I think it abounds. If I look closely, I see it everywhere: why certain tonalities resolve or clash, the harmonic structure of everything, even rhythmic subdivisions. I don't necessarily think of math while I'm playing music. But if I take a closer look, I'm astonished by the beauty of it. Similar to the way I feel about Algebra.
He doesn't conflate the two except, deliberately, in the title. One of his main points is precisely that 'music theory' and 'the analysis of 18th century composers' are often confused.
I also disagree that real music theory is just the mathematical part, but that's another discussion. I'd say music theory encompasses both aspects, and a lot more stuff that is necessary to describe music from other times and places than 18th century Europe.
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